Watching films in ignorance

I think it really is a question of ignorance on behalf of the viewer. Very few people live in a vacuum, not anymore. I remember showing someone 'Fight Club', a person who doesn't watch movies and she said 'Oh, the one where Brad Pitt and Ed Norton are the same characters?' Thankfully, she still liked the movie, but it did certainly deflate it for both her and myself (I love watching that 'oh shit' reaction from someone else).

I forget what film it was, but I have actively tried to distract someone from noticing something that telegraphs the ending or a twist, just to preserve it.

This is interesting. But almost impossible. It works in foreign countries though. But obviously not with film buffs, because they will have either a) seen the movie or b) know of it.

As an audience member, the best thing to do is try to put yourself in a mental state where you can imagine what it must have been like for people walking out of that theater. Just think of a movie you saw that gave you that "Oh my God" charge.

The one movie I wish I'd been around to see in its first release with audiences is Planet of the Apes. I can almost imagine the stunned silence - followed by anxious chatter that must have followed that iconic image of Heston punching the wet sand.

Planet is a big one. It certainly doesn't help things when they have that shot right on the front cover!

It certainly is hard to do. That's why regardless of the fact that I've seen maybe five episodes of the show in my life I'm looking forward to X-Files: I Want to Believe. I have honestly no idea what's going to happen and I intend to keep it that way.

Psycho was a tough one. I'd been told the ending years ago and I don't know if that's why I wasn't a big fan of the film. I don't know for sure though, I just need to re-watch the movie.

well its sometimes hard to find people who would like to waste time watching something that might be "crap". And that's why reviews were invented.

Now if you are suggesting that a potential viewer would see a movie "blind" only knowing that said film is considered "awesome" and that is the only knowledge the person can know of the film is that it is "awesome", the only movie that comes to mind that is truly "awesome" and many people still have NOT seen is Oldboy.

Foreign movies work better in this regard.

I'm considering buying the Korean movie "The Chaser" only because I've heard its "Awesome" and that hollywood has already bought the rights to it and it will star Leonardo Decraprio. So we shall see how that goes.

Oldboy is a great one to spring on people. I did that to my old roommate he never saw the twist coming. It left him a little fucked in the head.

I'll second KidNTheHelmet's story. Still haven't been forgiven.

I was proud of my Oldboy viewing, I forget when I nailed but, I was like [swipe]: Oh, they are so father and daughter. The mindfuck for me came during the explanation, which is definitely one of my favorite "bad guy" monologues and is capped off with such a wicked manner.

In the end, I guess you just have to get lucky with the person.

I host a movie night every week with these guys:

My buddy Cj just watched that after I gave it to him months ago. The conversation we had when he came over was pretty hilarious.

"Dude, what the fuck was with the ending?!"

I just laughed and asked if he enjoyed the flick.

He did.

I agree that foreign movies are easier to be surprised by, but I hate being spoiled for something that I'm looking forward to. I'm not one of those types to hunt down every piece of info on a movie from a Director who's previous work I like. I mostly just trust the Director and go into the movie blind. I might check a few reviews from critics whose tastes are similar to mine, but some people intentionally spoil movies they really want to see for themselves, which I never understood.

The only time I might spoil myself on a movie is if its a new filmmaker. For instance, when CHUD was spouting the greatness of Running Scared by Wayne Kramer, well, I hadn't seen The Cooler at that point, so I read more reviews of it than usual, and I knew about the crazy hockey arena ending. And I knew about it kinda being a Grimm's Fairy Tale. But did it really spoil my enjoyment of the movie? No.

As for films such as Psycho or other classics with memorable endings, well, everyone knows the end to Psycho even if they don't know who directed it, but there's other things to enjoy about that movie. I guess regular movie watchers won't get it, but for me I still appreciate the classics even if I know whats going to happen.

This can work with little known films.

When I was a kid I once turned on Showtime and started watching a movie without knowning what it was or how long it had been playing. I watched a small school in the middle of a desert with kids playing in the front when suddenly there was a peel of thunder (in clear blue sky) followed by a rian of huge hailstones. One of the kids got hit by a hailstone and covered by blood. This scene creeped me the hell out and I was rivited for the rest of the film. The movie then switches to Syndey and an aborgine getting chased by shaowing figures in the middle of a heavy rainstone. One figure stops at the top of a hill of rubble backlit by streetlights, gestures, and the rain just stops. Terrified, the man being chased suddenly looks over to a car where an old man is gesturing to him with some old bones in his hand. The man grabs his heart and collapses. And as it happend, that's how the movie started



The movie? The Last Wave by Peter Weir. Still creeps me out to this day. And had I found this movie in the video store and read the plot on the back of the package, I would not have had anything like the reaction I had.

I used to like watching Irwin Allen disaster movies high off my ass, but fast forwarding past the credits. The actors that turn up will have you howling.

I bet that works great. A whole new generation will now find a way to enjoy Independence Day.

Brilliant fucking movie. The very definition of "unsettling".

I was considering showing someone Picnic at Hanging Rock minus the opening sentences about four girls going missing. Do you think this makes the movie more or less unsettling? The person I would show it to knows nothing about it, that being considered, if I simply call the movie "unsettling", I hope the tension that -something- is going to happen to these girls is only raised. You might wonder, is this a horror movie?

Or does the opening sentence raise tension in that it makes the viewer think the story is real?

I've mentioned this story here before, but I'll write it again: I had the fortunate pleasure to watch Psycho for the first time with my best friend, who had absolutely no idea about the twist ending. I knew the ending, but I'd never seen the whole movie. She was all, "That old lady's crazy!" and I just smirked and said "Yes she is." I think that is the best way to enjoy a classic film that has a well-known plot or twist -- if at all possible watch it with someone who has little to no idea. I laugh harder at a comedy I've seen a few times if I'm watching it with a person who's never seen it before. Their laughter makes me laugh. I think the same thing can work with someone else's confusion/surprise/horror.

When I was a kid I channel surfed into Heavenly Creatures one night, near the beginning but after the bit that foreshadows the murder (and of course I had no knowledge of the real-life events). It destroyed me when the end happened the way it did. I still remember that night as a unique experience - not knowing anything, even what kind of movie I was watching, just taking it in.

Going to see "Memento" cold was one of the finer movie-going experiences of my life.

That said, I typically like to read every spoiler I can find for most movies. I call it "setting expectations." But every once in awhile, I do enjoy being blindsided by a movie.

The trick for me, as a few others have mentioned here, is to watch classics (or rather older movies), but not necessarily known or admittedly popular ones. You see, since I'm a pretty big DVD collector I've always tried to balance the latest purchases with a sweet dose of classic movies blind buys and occasionally these tend to be the ones that pay off. Nowadays everyone indeed knows the plot to Wanted or its visual style or how it may have a twist or not, but you'd be surprised by how a non-filmfan audience (ie. my girlfriend) still react to movies like Strangers on a Train, which everyone has heard of but y'knownotreallywatchedcosit'sinblackandwhite, something I personally always get a kick out of.

Now for me, top of the head, I can think of countless experiences of being blindsided: from Zulu's masterful siege sequences to Witness for the Prosecution's ultimate cynicism to Suddenly Last Summer's horror tones to The Man Who Came in From the Cold's spectacular performances... I could go on and on and on. So yeah, watch classics. It's fun... and makes you look smarter.

Sometimes I watch films on TCM that I know little about to get that unexpected frisson of pleasure.

See that? Point made. Thanks, hon.

Other than that, if you only watch stuff like Atonement or The Duchess, you might end up talking like a fag.

A bodalicious homosexual individual, I mean.

Some friends and I were going to watch Seven one video, and I was the only one who'd seen it in theatres. Once of them asked "Doesn't Kevin Spacey have a surprise twist in this or something?" and I said "No, that's The Usual Suspects" (which they had all seen, though that'd be pretty great if I'd blown the Usual Suspects twist in an effort to save Seven's). They thanked me for it.

The one movie I really wish I could've seen completely unawares is From Dusk Till Dawn. When I had my mother take me and my friend to see it, she had no idea there were vampires. That would've been a real what-the-FUCK-is-going-ON moment.

I watched The Desperate Hours on TCM this past week. Wow, was that ever an enjoyable movie that took more risks than I thought it would! I'd never heard of it, what a winner.

I'm envious of people who can watch movies that way. I remember showing a girlfriend From Dusk Till Dawn and she literally had NO CLUE what it was about so we watched it. At the half-way mark I started watching her face and I knew exactly what had happened on screen because of her "what the fuck?" face.

I'd image reading scripts for the first time must be like that too.

That's what I meant a few posts above, yep. Before meeting me, my GF was -how could I say- not exactly a film fan (last time she had been to the movies was in 1994 with The Flintstones and we met in 2002), so during all these years I've been introducing her to all kinds of movies most of you would believe she couldn't have heard of unless she'd been living under a rock ("Wait, Independence Day is an... alien invasion movie?").

Nowadays, most of the fun of watching the movies with her comes from those reactions -I even try to hide the DVD Menus to not clue her in- though occasionally the surprise also bites back in the ass when you expect her to love some of your favorite movies the way you do (The Philadelphia Story or Die Hard come to mind).

Exactly right. Though a passion of mine, one of my job's perks is getting access to scripts and while some of them are projects I may have heard about in one way or another, others come completely out of the blue and become a memorable experience. Eventually, the reward is double if the movie ends up being totally different from how you imagined (who'd have thought the clunkering script for The Strangers would become one of my fave movies of 2008?) while others, due to getting stuck in Development Hell or then massively rewritten, are like that book you loved so much that you wished you would someday see on the big screen (Peter Iliff's Fast Flash to Bang Time or Mark Bomback's original version of Die Hard 4.0).

...Which leads us to remakes. Guess most of us get highly dubious of them when the original's so fantastic (The Day the Earth Stood Still for one?), but what happens when it's the other way around, in which you first watch the remake and then the original? As for Desperate Hours in particular, I'm guilty as charged of watching the Rourke-Hopkins remake first and then the Bogey original (automatically crossing off the Cimino version of my rewatch list for the next 100 years), but anyone else has had this feeling of "oh, fuck, this one ruined my enjoyment of the other movie forever?"

Well... I happen to know two people who saw FDTD completely unaware.

Thing is, they hated the movie. (Interestingly enough, both these people are named Daniel.)

Daniel #1 basically said something like: Yeah that movie is so good. It's involving and it's good and great performances and interesting characters and it's really good and interesting and suspenseful...

Then they get to the bar in Mexico and the movie becomes a piece of shit!

Daniel #2's opinion is pretty much a variation on the same thing.

So the "double-feature" aspect of the movie probably wouldn't work on some people and maybe it's better if they know going in that it's two movies in one.

I didn't see many movies when I was a kid, but I had a friend in junior high who blew the endings of at least five key classics for me. Psycho and Night of the Living Dead being the most unforgivable. I think I learned about Citizen Kane and Planet of the Apes on my own, through books and newspapers.

Thing is, I don't think my long-term enjoyment of any of those films was damaged by this. Sure, I'd like to have been surprised the first time around, but the problem with a film that depends entirely upon surprise is, it only works once.

P.S. I myself am very bad at introducing friends to movies without telling them half the story in advance. The only time I've succeeded was with Forgotten Silver. Which, if any of you haven't seen, you should, without reading the box or the menus or anything.

I just remembered how the Usual Suspects got ruined for me. Back when Scary Movie came out when the ending came my friend laughed and went oh that's the Usual Suspects ending. Now cut to about two years later when I'm watching the Usual Suspects and about halfway through the movie I remembered my friends random ass comment from a shitty movie I had seen two years prior.

Ruined the twist, but not the film. I still love it but I do wish that asshole had not ruined it for me like two years earlier.

Have any of you shown The Shape of Things to an unsuspecting viewer? I bet that'd be something.

Tommy Lee Jones has this little light he wants you to look at.

As others have said oldboy is a great one and really got me. The problem is that I figured my then g/f would never want to see that so I ruined the ending for her. 2 1/2 years later she is now my wife and that movie has really stuck with me making me want to show her but I worry she might remember.